Bio-plastic composite containing brewer&#39;s spent grains and a method for making the same

ABSTRACT

A method for manufacturing bio-plastic composite containing brewer&#39;s spent grains includes the steps of: providing brewer&#39;s spent grains; providing petrochemical plastic; mixing the brewer&#39;s spent grains with the petrochemical plastic at an addition amount of 10% to 60% wt. of brewer&#39;s spent grains and 40% to 90% wt. of petrochemical plastic; and providing a binder at a weight proportion of 8% to 12%. A pretreatment unit which uses a dehydration process, a desiccation process, a drying process, a grinding process and a sieving process to process the brewer&#39;s spent grains into brewer&#39;s spent grains which have a length-to-diameter ratio of 7.6 to 10.2. A granulator includes a double screw extruder connected with a cutting machine. The double screw extruder mixes the petrochemical plastic and the brewer&#39;s spent grains and extrudes them into plastic bars, which are then cut into plastic granules by the cutting machine.

BACKGROUND Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to the application of brewer's spent grain, and more particularly to a bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains and a method for making the same.

Related Prior Art

In Taiwan, approximately 18 billion plastic bags and 2 billion plastic straws are used every year, which causes serious environmental pollution. Besides, the raw material cost of all commercial petroleum refined products is so much influenced by the price of the petroleum. When oil price is soaring, the refining cost, out of question, is relatively high, and the refining itself is a high energy consumption and high pollution industry. Furthermore, if the plastic products cycling rate is low, many plastic wastes will be discarded, burned or buried, which will cause serious air, soil and water source pollution.

In recent years, bio-degradable green plastic products have been used to reduce the use of petroleum refined products. The raw material of the existing bio-plastic composites mostly come from PLA (Polyplastic Acid) and starch, especially, the PLA accounts for about half of the raw material used, and is widely used in the industry. However, PLA mainly uses the edible economic crops for human beings, such as corn, as the raw material, not only the crops availability is unreliable, but also the raw cost is relatively high.

Therefore, agricultural waste is used to replace or to reduce the use of the PLA and other bio-plastic. The most common agricultural waste includes: rice husk, wheat shell, corn stalk, bagasse, coconut, coconut shell, wood chips and coffee grounds . . . etc, among which, the rice husk and the coffee grounds are most widely used. However, the rice husk is normally used as agricultural litter, seedling, compost and fuelwood, making it commercial difficult. Coffee grounds can be obtained from a chain of coffee stores or convenience stores, but the coffee grounds pretreatment is difficult. The cost for the coffee grounds itself is cheap, however, the pretreatment cost is high, which consequently leads to increase in the coffee-grounds produced products.

The present invention has arisen to mitigate and/or obviate the afore-described disadvantages.

SUMMARY

The present invention is aimed at providing a bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains and a method for making the same, which is capable of reducing the use of petrochemical plastic and the plastic pollution by adding brewer's spent grain into the petrochemical plastic.

The present invention is aimed at providing a bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains and a method for making the same, wherein the bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains of the present invention can be used to produce bio-plastic composite products, such as containers, bottles, parts, so that the brewer's spent grains can be recycled for value-added commercial products.

To achieve the above objects, a method for manufacturing bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains in accordance with the present invention comprises the following steps:

a step a of providing a raw material containing brewer's spent grains;

a step b of providing a raw material containing petrochemical plastic;

a step c of mixing the brewer's spent grains with the petrochemical plastic at an addition amount of 10% to 60% wt. of brewer's spent grains and 40% to 90% wt. of petrochemical plastic; and

a step d of providing a binder to enable the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastic to be well mixed, and to maintain a desired tensile strength, wherein an addition amount of the binder is 8% to 12% by weight.

Preferably, the step a includes a pretreatment unit which uses a dehydration process, a desiccation process, a drying process, a grinding process and a sieving process to process the brewer's spent grains into brewer's spent grains which have a length-to-diameter ratio of 7.6 to 10.2.

Preferably, the addition amount of the brewer's spent grains is 20% by weight, and the TS of the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastic is 23.7 MPa.

Preferably, a moisture content of the brewer's spent grains is controlled at 2% to 5%.

Preferably, a bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains, comprises: addition amounts of 10%˜60% wt. of brewer's spent grains, 40%˜90% wt. of petrochemical plastic and 8%˜12% wt. of binder, wherein the binder enables the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastic to be mixed, and to maintain a desired tensile strength.

Preferably, a granulator includes a double screw extruder connected with a cutting machine, the cutting machine includes a petrochemical plastic feeding port, a brewer's spent grain feeding port and a discharge port, the cutting machine includes an input hole and an output hole, the discharge port communicates with the input hole, the double screw extruder mixes the petrochemical plastic material and the brewer's spent grains and extrudes them into plastic bars, and the bar-shaped plastic bars are cut into plastic granules by the cutting machine.

These together with other objects of the invention, along with the various features of novelty which characterize the invention, are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure. For a better understanding of the invention, its operating advantages and the specific objects attained by its uses, reference should be had to the accompanying drawings and descriptive matter in which there are illustrated preferred embodiments of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the pretreatment unit of the present invention; and

FIG. 2 is an illustrative view showing the structure of a granulator in accordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present invention will be clearer from the following description when viewed together with the accompanying drawings, which show, for purpose of illustrations only, the preferred embodiment in accordance with the present invention.

The present invention relates to a bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains and a method for making the same. More specifically, the present invention is designed to reduce the weight ratio of the existing petrochemical plastics by adding brewer's spent grains and a binder, to make the bio-plastic composite contain addition amounts of 10%˜60% wt. of brewer's spent grains, 40%˜90% wt. of petrochemical plastic and 8%˜12% wt. of binder.

More specifically, the brewer's spent grains are the waste produced in the process of beer production, and have moisture content as high as 70%˜80%. Therefore, the brewer's spent grains must be subjected to a pretreatment carried out by a pretreatment unit 10 before being mixed with the petrochemical plastic, as shown in FIG. 1. The pretreatment unit 10 includes: a dehydration process 11, a desiccation process 12, a drying process 13, a grinding process 14 and a sieving process 15.

The dehydration process 11 includes preliminarily dehydrating the brewer's spent grains.

The desiccation process 12 includes putting the brewer's spent grains which have been preliminarily dehydrated into an air drying cabinet for further dehydration.

The drying process 13 includes putting the brewer's spent grains which have gone through the desiccation process 12 into an oven at a temperature of 110 Celsius degrees for 8 hours, and performing a moisture content test.

The grinding process 14 includes putting the brewer's spent grains which have gone through the drying process 13 into a grinder for grinding for 10 seconds.

The sieving process 15 includes sieving the brewer's spent grains which have gone through the grinding process 14 with sieves of 20, 40, 50, 60 mesh, thus obtaining brewer's spent grains of various L/D (length to diameter) ratios.

Please see the L/D ratio experimental data of the brewer's spent grains as shown in the below table 1.

TABLE 1 The L/D ratio of the brewer's spent grains Fiber size (L/D) ratio 20 Mesh 7.6 40 Mesh 9 50 Mesh 10.2 60 Mesh 184.8 (um)

Table 1 shows that the L/D ratio of the brewer's spent grains is 7.6 when a 20 mesh sieve is used, the L/D ratio of the brewer's spent grains is 9.0 when the sieve is 40 mesh, and the L/D ratio of the brewer's spent grains is 10.2 when the sieve is 50 mesh. The diameter of the brewer's spent grains will be 184.8 μm when the sieve is 60 mesh, and the brewer's spent grains are actually in the form of particles rather than grains, and therefore there is no L/D ratio when the brewer's spent grains become particles. The L/D ratio ranges from 7.6 to 10.2 when the brewer's spent grains have a size larger than 50 meshes. It can be learned from the experimental data that there is a reinforcement effect when the brewer's spent grains which have a L/D ratio of 7.6˜10.2 are mixed with the petrochemical plastics, and the reinforcement effect will be better when the L/D ratio is larger than 9.

Please see the below table 2 for the experimental data obtained from the experiments made with various amounts of added brewer's spent grains.

TABLE 2 Amount of added grains TS(MPa) 0%(totally HDPE) 23.4 10% 23.5 20% 23.7 30% 21.5 40% 16.6 50% 13.6 60% 10.1

The table 2 shows that the TS (tensile strength) is 23.4 MPa when no brewer's spent grains are added, TS is 23.5 MPa when the addition amount (amount of the added brewer's spent grains) is 10% by weight, and TS is 23.7 MPa and 21.5 MPa when the addition amounts are 20% and 30% by weight, respectively. The TS is greater than 20 MPa when the addition amount ranges from 10% to 30% by weight, which is very close to the TS (tensile strength) of 23.4 MPa when no brewer's spent grains are added, more specifically, when the addition amount is 10˜20% by weight, the TS is closest to 23.4 MPa. With the increase of the addition amount of the brewer's spent grains, the TS showed a downward trend. When the addition number reaches 40%, the TS value reduced to 16.6 MPa, and the addition number is 60%, the TS value will be as low as 10.1 MPa. It shows that the appropriate addition amount of the brewer's spent grains is 10%˜30% by weight because the corresponding TS values are all greater than 20 MPa which is very close to the TS value when no brewer's spent grains are added. More specifically, the TS is closest to 23.4 MPa which is the optimum value, when the addition amount is 10˜20% by weight.

Please see the below table 3 for the experimental data of the influence of different moisture contents on the tensile strength.

TABLE 3 Moisture content TS(MPa)  2% 23.7  5% 22.5 10% 19.8 20% 17.9

The experimental data as shown in Table 3 shows that different moisture contents of the brewer's spent grains truly affect the TS. With the increase of the moisture content, the TS showed a downward trend, therefore, it is obvious that the less the moisture content of the brewer's spent grains, the stronger the TS will be. The moisture content can be reduced to 2%˜5% by the drying process 13, and the resultant TS will be greater than 20. When the moisture content is 2%, the TS is 23.7, and when the moisture content is 5%, the TS is 22.5, which are very close to the TS value when no brewer's spent grains are added. Therefore, the TS reaches the best condition when the moisture content ranges from 2% to 5%, and will reach the maximum value when the moisture content is 2%.

Finally, please see the below table 4 which shows the experimental data for various amounts of added binder under the condition that the addition amount of the brewer's spent grains is 10% to 30% by weight, and the moisture content is 2% to 5%.

TABLE 4 Amount of added - binder TS(MPa) 0% 16.4 3% 18.7 5% 19.4 8% 23.7 12%  20.8

The experimental data as shown in Table 4 shows that all the detected TS values are lower than 20 MPa when the addition amount (the amount of the added binder) of the binder is 0% to 5% by weight. The reason is the addition amount of the binder is insufficient. When the addition amount of the binder is too low, it will weaken the bonding strength between the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastics and the tensile strength. When the addition amounts of the binder are 8% and 12% by weight, the TS values are 23.7 MPa and 20.8 MPa, respectively. More specifically, when the addition amount of the binder is 8% by weight, the TS values is 23.7 MPa which is very close to the TS (tensile strength) of 23.4 MPa when no brewer's spent grains are added. When the addition amount of the binder is 12% by weight, the TS slightly decreases but is still 20.8 MPa. Therefore, the addition amount of the binder must range from 8% to 12% by weight in order to maintain the bonding strength and the TS of the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastics at a level close to 23.4 MPa.

Referring then to FIG. 2, which is an illustrative view showing the structure of a granulator 20 in accordance with the present invention, wherein the granulator 20 includes a double screw extruder 21 connected with a cutting machine 22. The cutting machine 22 includes a petrochemical plastic feeding port 210, a brewer's spent grain feeding port 211 and a discharge port 212. The cutting machine 22 includes an input hole 220 and an output hole 221. The discharge port 212 communicates with the input hole 220. Petrochemical plastic material and the brewer's spent grains are fed through the petrochemical plastic feeding port 210 and the brewer's spent grain feeding port 211, respectively, into the double screw extruder 21, in which, the petrochemical plastic material and the brewer's spent grains are mixed and then extruded into a plastic bars A. Then, the bar-shaped plastic bars A are fed from the discharge port 212 to the input hole 220 of the cutting machine 22 and cut into plastic granules B which are used as raw materials to produce desired products, such as containers, bottles, parts.

It can be learned from the above description that a method for manufacturing bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains in accordance with the present invention comprises the following steps:

Step a: providing a raw material containing brewer's spent grains;

Step b: providing a raw material containing petrochemical plastic;

Step c: mixing the brewer's spent grains with the petrochemical plastic at a proportion of 10% to 60% wt. of brewer's spent grains and 40% to 90% wt. of petrochemical plastic; and

Step d: providing a binder to enable the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastic to be evenly mixed, and to maintain a desired tensile strength, wherein an addition amount of the binder is 8% to 12% by weight.

It can be learned from the above method and the tables 1-4 that the optimum addition amount of the brewer's spent grains is 10% to 20% by weight, and the L/D ratio of the brewer's spent grains is 7.6 to 10.2. The brewer's spent grains whose optimum value of the L/D ratio is larger than 9 have a better reinforcement effect. The moisture content of the brewer's spent grains is preferably controlled at 2%˜5% in order to have a better TS, and optimally controlled at 2%.

In this embodiment, the binder is a high density polyethylene which can be produced at lower pressure and contain more long chain, and is used to produce various plastic products. More particularly, the bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains of the present invention can be to produce bio-plastic composite products, such as containers, bottles, parts, so that the brewer's spent grains can be recycled for value-added commercial products.

The present invention relates to a bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains and a method for making the same. After going through the pretreatment, including the dehydration process, the desiccation process, the drying process, the grinding process and the sieving process, the dried brewer's spent grains are mixed with petrochemical plastic at a specific proportion, then a binder which is selected from a high density polyethylene is used to enable the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastic to be evenly mixed, and finally the double screw extruder 21 and the cutting machine 22 are used to produce bio-plastic composite granules. The present invention is capable of reducing the use of petrochemical plastic and the plastic pollution by adding brewer's spent grain to the petrochemical plastic.

While we have shown and described various embodiments in accordance with the present invention, it is clear to those skilled in the art that further embodiments may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for manufacturing bio-plastic composite containing brewer's spent grains, comprising the following steps: a step (a) of providing a raw material containing brewer's spent grains; a step (b) of providing a raw material containing petrochemical plastic; and a step (c) of mixing the brewer's spent grains with the petrochemical plastic at an addition amount of 10% to 60% by wt. of brewer's spent grains and 40% to 90% by wt. of petrochemical plastic with respect to the total weight of the composite; wherein the step (a) includes a pretreatment unit which uses a dehydration process, a desiccation process, a drying process, a grinding process and a sieving process to process the brewer's spent grains into brewer's spent grains which have a length-to-diameter ratio of 7.6 to 10.2.
 2. The method as claimed in claim 1 further comprising a step (d) of providing a binder to enable the brewer's spent grains and the petrochemical plastic to be mixed, and to maintain a desired tensile strength, wherein an addition amount of the binder is 8% to 12% by weight with respect to the total weight of the composite.
 3. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the addition amount of the brewer's spent grains is 10% to 30% by weight, and the addition amount of the binder is 8% by weight.
 4. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein a moisture content of the brewer's spent grains is controlled at 2% to 5%.
 5. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the step (a) includes a granulator which includes a double screw extruder connected with a cutting machine, the cutting machine includes a petrochemical plastic feeding port, a brewer's spent grain feeding port and a discharge port, the cutting machine includes an input hole and an output hole, the discharge port communicates with the input hole, the double screw extruder mix the petrochemical plastic material and the brewer's spent grains and extrude them into plastic bars, and the bar-shaped plastic bars are cut into plastic granules by the cutting machine. 